


Something Different, For a Change

by confessingly



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-12-30
Updated: 2012-12-30
Packaged: 2017-11-22 23:48:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/615728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/confessingly/pseuds/confessingly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mal’s rules had failed, of course, to account for crippling boredom brought on by the aftermath of the most pulse-racing, high-stakes job in dreamshare history. Combined with possibly suicidal tendencies. Which he had to possess in some small measure, surely, or why else would Eames still be here? Wouldn’t a sensible person have thrown him out by now?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Different, For a Change

Boredom is not something that Arthur is accustomed to. It sets his bones into a jitter that he can’t help but count out, iambic pentameter in the pounding rhythm of the shower he takes at ten in the morning because there’s nowhere to go; in the hum of the air conditioner in the best high-rise Saito’s money can buy; in the soft noise of the shifting bed sheets with an impossibly high thread count; in the pour of the 1787 Chateau Lafite into one glass, every night.

Eames is keeping himself busy, as Eames is wont to do, and he calls Arthur every now and then from wherever he is. Mostly it’s Osaka. Sometimes it’s Prague. Once, it’s Reykjavík.

“I’m looking for a point man for a job I’m on,” he says, each time. And then two and a half beats before: “A good one.”

Then the outlines of the case, before Arthur can say anything else. It’s always the same, these days, though, like a familiar waltz. Competitive CEOs or oil tycoons jealous of their wives’ possible lovers, that’s the rising trend. Get in, extract, exit; simple and clean, no fuss at all. No interest, either. He could run a job like that in his sleep. So could Eames, of course, but he sells it as best as he can.

And every time: “I’ll pass. I’ll let you know if I find anyone else.” He never bothers. Eames still gets it done. Collects his paycheck and—on.

“You’re a real bore these days, darling,” Eames crackles at him. “Come and play.”

“You’re the bore,” says Arthur, but because they are both right, he hangs up and waits for Eames to call him on another night exactly like this one.

He still gets his own calls for several months, of course. There are no other Arthurs in the business. Mal had always said it was because he was inimitable, that others were afraid of claiming a reputation they couldn’t deliver on, but she didn’t know the difference between reality and dreams, so it isn’t all that much of a compliment to go on. But the other offers are the same, too, and after a while the suspicions work their way through the network. Arthur’s out. They all stop calling.

Except, of course, Eames. He’s perceptive that way.

Sometimes he plays that Piaf song again and looks out the windows of his apartment, Paris sprawling below him, and he wonders if he’ll ever work again—if this boredom is worse than what Eames has chosen.

If he dreams, he dreams of a warehouse on the other side of town, of endless stacks of diagrams and notes and models. But that invigoration, the thrill of the challenge, has faded, and he can’t hold on to it even in his sleep.

—

“Dinner?” says Eames.

“Where are you this time?” asks Arthur, realizing only after he speaks that this isn’t how things usually go. He knows what comes next. _Arthur, you bore. You’re so predictable. Creature of habit, you are_.

“Where do you think?” Eames replies instead, but there’s a laugh behind it, barely smothered. “Taillevent. Twenty minutes, pet, I wouldn’t want to lose our table to some bourgeoisie presidential aides.”

“See you in thirty,” says Arthur, because he’s annoyed at himself, and because words like ‘bourgeoisie’ are really below even Eames. “Suit,” he adds, inexplicably.

Eames laughs outright now. “So you don’t sleep in those things? That’s thirty I owe Yusuf.”

“I—” Outrage strangles his vocal chords.

“Come quickly. They’ve got a crab remoulade tonight, and I can’t wait to see your gaudiest cufflinks.”

He hangs up, and Arthur says to the silence: “My taste in cufflinks is exquisite.”

Forty minutes later and Eames is wearing a monstrously ill-fitting brown and orange tweed suit, suede patching his elbows and one shoulder. Arthur bites his tongue. It’s his first trip out of the apartment for something other than groceries in two weeks.

“Arthur,” he says, a curve to his mouth that might be a smile. “What’s it been? Eighteen months? You look dull as ever.” A server ushers them to a table by the window.

“Twenty-two,” Arthur replies, hoping he is smiling back but feeling, for the most part, uncomfortable. “I see you have continued to buck all trends in menswear.” He can’t help himself; that suit is atrocious.

Eames reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of Dunhills, lighting one up without offering it to him. “I hope you’ve planned to have ‘stick-in-the-mud’ engraved over that undoubtedly colossal and lavish mausoleum you will someday have.”

“I’ll be sure to write ‘deeply irresponsible’ on your otherwise unmarked grave,” says Arthur, wishing he’d had a glass of the Lafite, at the very least, before coming out here.

“Come on now, Arthur,” Eames shrugs, blowing a thin stream of smoke between his lips. “You’ve just described to me my dream scenario. Try a little harder.”

“No smoking in the restaurant, sir,” their waitress says nervously.

“Are you here for any particular reason?” Arthur snaps at him, ignoring her. “Another suspicious husband? Or you found a bank robber for a client?”

Eames rolls his eyes. “It’s not polite to discuss business at the dinner table.”

“Color me impolite, then.”

“Really, sir, please put out your cigarette,” the waitress repeats, voice firmer, her ponytail quivering slightly.

“Eames. I didn’t come to dinner to chat about old times.”

“That’s surprising,” Eames snorts. “Considering that’s all you seem to think about now. How to find a job that matches up to the last one. I’d think that’s the only thing you’d want to talk about, old times.” He drops the still-burning filter into a glass of water, where it sizzles, ashes floating to the bottom; he lights another.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” says the waitress.

“But I wanted the crab,” sighs Eames.

—

Instead of crab, they have crepes, which are nearly soaked by a sudden downpour, but saved by Eames’s jacket (for lack of a better word; Arthur is still not certain it qualifies as clothing) and therefore still edible in the warmth of Arthur’s apartment. It is a letdown.

“Dinner’s over,” says Arthur at last. “Business. And don’t—” he puts up a warning hand as Eames reaches, again, for his cigarettes. “Not in here.”

“Right. Then.” Eames leans against the window and runs aioli-streaked fingers across its surface, half-turning to smirk at Arthur. But his next words push thoughts of Windex out of his head entirely: “I found someone who wants another inception.”

Arthur blinks. “Another—”

“Yes. I know, I wasn’t certain either, but once I learned who they were, it made more sense. Dom’s out, nobody trusts Yusuf, and Ariadne—she’s too green for their crowd. But they want us.” There is an undercurrent of excitement in Eames’s voice, pushing up through the monotone despite his best efforts.

There is a flare of excitement in Arthur, too, but he suppresses it quickly, turning his attention to the rain now spattering against the dark windows instead of at Eames and his ill-concealed smirk. “Inception can’t always work.”

“It will here,” Eames says, brimful of confidence. “We’re going to be living alongside the mark while we gather data. He trusts our client wholeheartedly. So when we show up in his subconscious, he’ll trust us, too.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun,” sighs Arthur, settling back as the momentary hope dies out. “What would we even be trying to implant? Something mundane, I’m sure.”

“No, pet,” he laughs, dragging his fingertips along the glass. “We’ll be getting this bloke to walk to his death.”

“Suicide?” The thought repulses him, but he has to admit—

“Don’t be stupid, Arthur, it’s not a good look on you.” _Oh_. “All we have to do is get the mark to decide he’s going to pay the family a visit. Quietly, with no outside influence.”

“His family’s going to…Eames, who’s the client? What family?”

Eames is smiling broadly now. Wolfishly, even. “Just a little one in Sicily.”

It takes a few seconds longer than it really ought to for that to sink in, but when it does, he sinks down in his chair.

“Of all the families to fuck with, you had to pick the worst.”

“Oh, I know.”

“It’s a suicide mission,” Arthur says bleakly. “One fuck-up and you’re dead.”

But Eames just rubs the streaks of oil on the window into circles. “I’m aware. But it’ll be interesting, won’t it? I’ve been so terribly bored.” He looks back at Arthur. “What do you say, Stick-In-The-Mud? I’m sure you’ve got some deeply fascinating book collecting to get back to. Far better for your mental and physical health than this little job.”

“I’m in,” says Arthur, and they shake on it once Eames has washed his hands.

—

When he’d entered the business (when Mal and Cobb had found him at a lecture series on PASIV technology and the implications of dreamshare, several lifetimes ago) he’d had one rule, instilled in him by Mal: _Don’t fuck with a Family_. He knew it was a serious rule because she did say ‘fuck’.

And he’d managed, despite the obvious illegality of extraction and the underworld he’d become a part of, to stay out of it. American or Indian; Russian or Mexican; especially Sicilian. Older crime syndicates were reluctant to get into extraction, anyways—their methods worked just fine to get the information they needed. And when it caught on, inevitably, they preferred to work in-house. So it wasn’t much of a struggle, really. But he’d turned down the rare offers and shuddered at the stories he heard. It just wasn’t worth the risk.

Mal’s rule had failed, of course, to account for crippling boredom brought on by the aftermath of the most pulse-racing, high-stakes job in dreamshare history. Combined with possibly suicidal tendencies. Which he had to possess in some small measure, surely, or why else would Eames still be here? Wouldn’t a sensible person have thrown him out by now?

“It’s simple,” Eames says. “Our client is a distinguished gentleman by the name of Mr. Marimberga. Cappofamiglia in Palermo. Several years ago he expanded into small-time cocaine trade in northern Italy, and set up Orazio Rumore as the capo out in a tourist spot up in the Dolomite Mountains.”

“And Rumore is the mark?”

“Really, Arthur, all this time away from the job has made you a keen observer of obvious facts. Are you having trouble following already?”

“Get to the point.”

“With pleasure. As you noted with such stunning acumen, Rumore is our mark. He doesn’t like the village life, apparently, and Marimberga has it on good authority that Italian federal agents recently visited him. So our job is two-fold. First, an extraction. What has Rumore told the authorities? And two, an inception: Marimberga wants this done the honorable way. He wants Rumore to admit what he’s done to him in person. He knows Rumore won’t come if he’s summoned; he’ll just disappear. So our job is to get him to take a trip down to Palermo for a confessional.”

“So we’re working for men of honor, here,” Arthur groans. “And what if it turns out that Marimberga is just a paranoid don and Rumore is his man, through and through? We skip the inception, and it’s a plain old extraction with Mafia ties?”

Eames rolls his eyes. “Marimberga _is_ just a paranoid don. He’s made up his mind. He doesn’t trust Rumore anymore, and if we come back with nothing, we’re fucked. So we do the inception anyways.”

“Well, why the fuck would you take a job like this?” says Arthur, irritated at Eames once more. “It’s risky, it’s pointless, it may not even be doable, and it’s _Cosa Nostra_. Of all the clients.”

“Then why the fuck did you agree to join me?” asks Eames.

He opens his mouth to answer, but nothing comes out. Eames smirks and heads for the door.

“I know we shook on it, Eames, but I’m not risking my life on a job this unbelievably foolish,” Arthur says, too loudly.

Without even looking back or pausing for even a second, Eames calls back, “What life?”

He’s gone before Arthur can retort, but maybe it’s for the best: he can’t contest that.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know when I'll be motivated to finish this but whatever. At worst it's just a fun one-and-done bit of banter.


End file.
